Saturday, August 12, 2017

Following the rest of this series is a little up in the air
for me this weekend, and I’d like to shake things up in the dog days anyway.
The most noteworthy part of the series, barring more Moncada heroics or
neighborly spats turned benches cleared (good for the soul sometimes), was the
White Sox debut of Reynaldo Lopez last night. Has been inevitable for a while
now, and he made the most of his first start last night. Deserves a full
breakdown.

Scouting Report:

Giolito was the headliner initially
for the Eaton deal, but Lopez was the one coming in with actual major league
experience. I thought it was a couple
starts and relief appearances back in Washington but didn’t realize until this
week that he pitched in the NLDS. The fastball is what you notice first, flirting
with triple digits on occasion, and the slider complements that very well- 85
with a lot of movement. Throws a good curve and, on the rare occasion, a
change-up (we’ll get into that later).

1st inning:

Good first impression on the
leadoff batter: Merrifield watches a slider go by for a called third. Fastball
coming in at 97 mph pretty consistently, and he’s hitting his spots with it for
the most part. He really brings the
heat next at-bat, getting Cain swinging at 98 on the gun. Lot of scouts have
said we’ll probably be getting used to that.

Dances
around Hosmer a little too much and forces the walk. Standing ovation follows-
Melky Cabrera returns to the Southside for his first game as a Royal. (A pretty
funny moment when we’re all sitting back down and the guy next to me yells “Now
strike him out!” with great comedic timing.) Gets him to fly out to shallow
left. Hit 99 and 100 in this inning supposedly- guessing that’s the hometown
speed gun talking.

2nd inning:

The filthiest thing I saw
all night came in the first at-bat against Moose: fouls off four fastballs and
is down 1-2. Throws another fastball out of the zone (98) and follows it up
with a 78 mph curve to get him swinging. Almost unfair, that bait.

Have
said in a previous post about Rodon that young strikeout-oriented pitchers make
me a little nervous: the huge upside for them is outs without a ball put in
play, the downside is my three sins of strikeout pitchers. The first sin is
catching on to the gameplan right away: eventually the Royals start watching a
lot of curveballs, which a strikeout pitcher tends to throw for less accuracy.
If trying to just get an out (usually a groundout), it has to be in the zone
enough for the batter to swing at with enough movement to negate solid contact.
A strikeout pitcher will want much more movement with less intent to throw a
strike: doesn’t matter if it’s in the zone or in the dirt if the outcome is the
batter swinging and missing. Royals catch on and adjust accordingly.

Lopez
walks one and strikes out the next two- slider working early. Four change-ups
supposedly thrown to Gordon, which would surprise me.

The
second sin of strikeout pitchers? Pitch count. Five strikeouts, 42 pitches
through 2.

3rd inning:

Butera
lines out on the first pitch, which is the best thing that could’ve happened to
Lopez. He needs a quick inning if he’ll make it through six. The next at-bat doesn’t help: he walks Merrifield, luckily not wasting many pitches in doing so. I’m curious to see
how he adjusts his gameplan for a situation where I’d assume he’d look to
forcing a double play. He does no such
thing: baits Cain with an off speed then blows him away with a fastball. Gets a
first pitch pop up the next at-bat, and he’s out of the inning on ten pitches.

4th inning:

The first sin of strikeout
pitchers: the hitters adjust accordingly

The second
sin: high pitch counts

The
third sin: you miss your spot, you’re in trouble. Home run trouble.

It
happens to every single strikeout pitcher, most obviously with Rodon and
Shields. It was also my one critique of Chris Sale: a lot of lines featuring 10
K’s, 1 home run. The more you dance around batters and the more bait pitches
you throw, the more pitches they hit the living snot out of when you miss your
spot. Case in point: Moustakas.

I
thought it was a change-up Lopez threw there, apparently it was a hung slider.
He wasn’t using it as a bait pitch so much as he did the curveball, but
sometimes your slider doesn’t- well, slide. Moonshot to the right field
bleachers, lead cut in half.

The
Royals get more aggressive at the plate this time through the order, following
the homer with two hits on two pitches. Now I’m really curious to see what he does in a less implied double play
situation. The foul out to hold ‘em was probably the highlight of the inning
(another good outcome for strikeout pitchers).

5th inning:

Great diving catch by Engel
saves Lopez the runner on nobody out trouble. Slider still coming in at around
85, but the fastball is losing some of the heat. (More of a fastball pitcher
problem than a strikeout pitcher problem, but those overlap more often than
not). Not sure if it’s necessarily a result of this, but Cain had a collision
with the wall earlier in the game that it looked like his wrist took the brunt
of. Lopez, that in mind or me looking to far into it, jams him for the foul out
to first. If so that’s a great pitching mindset.

Tim has
trouble with a ground ball and Abreu saves him with a pick. Seemed to catch him
off guard, and understood: it was Lopez’s first groundout of the game.

6th inning:

Lopez likely done after
this. Was likely done before the Moose home run, but that probably sealed the
deal (and unfortunately cost him the win). Homer came on a change-up, which
going in I’d heard Lopez throws very sparingly. Like, four change-ups a game
sparingly. He can get outs on his regular pitches, and it’s rare to be really,
really good throwing five different pitches. Eventually we might be forcing the
issue on those change-ups. Gets a
groundout and a pop out to close it out.

Overall
there’s a lot of potential here for
him. When he’s on he’s filthy: some of those 98’s on the corner and late moving
sliders were absolutely unhittable. Six K’s are nice, but the wins are better,
and unfortunately only two mistakes were enough to cost him that victory. Have
a feeling he’ll have a couple more of those games before this rebuild moves to
phase two. So it goes here.

Friday, August 11, 2017

Series like this for Houston must be why college admissions
require second semester grades from seniors. For the White Sox, awesome, sweeping
from a great team. For the Astros… work week series against a last place team?
Not a red flag in the dog days. Doesn’t seem like we saw the best of Houston
this homestand.

Don’t
always get to talk about a series win here, though, so let’s dive in. Avi
didn’t miss a beat coming back from the DL, putting us on the board right away Tuesday. More small ball follows for three more runs. Safe to admit that Keuchel
didn’t have his best stuff- again, weekday game, last place team. ‘Stros tie it
up right away before Kevan Smith takes over with a double and a homer
respectively. I boil the good from this game down to consistent good starts
from Holland, who definitely needed a win after getting cheated out of one last
start, and the young guys getting it done, which was a very pleasant theme all
series. Bullpen rocky, but that’s old news.

Wednesday was a clear mission for me to retire the “live by the long ball” rhetoric. Sans
the Tim Anderson (thank God) home run, all runs scored on singles or doubles, a
great sign of moving the chains in the batting order. Love Beloved Son
Moncada’s walks and Delmonico’s hot start, especially the middle of the order. Gonzalez
back to his solid self, lasting eight with little difficulty, a tough feat
against a team where half the lineup’s around .300.

Thursday.
The Moncada game. Why I said give it a full month before actual concerns about
him. Why the average doesn’t mean much. Why this guy has all the makings of the
real deal. Welcome to the show, companero.

The
obvious before last night: dude gets on base. I’ve already brought up his
vision at the plate here, but he has a knack for picking his pitches. It’s a
great tendency to have compared to prospects who get impatient at the plate and
swing at bad pitches, which leads to seeing less pitches, which leads to never
really figuring out pitch sequences in major league at bats. Yoan’s seen a lot
of pitches so far and seems to be getting the hang of how they’re pitching to
him. He also only has trouble with one
pitch, change-ups, which means fouling those off in favor of other pitches.
Different story if two or more pitches are a weakness.

Taking a 99 mph fast
ball to the opposite field bleachers in the bottom of the ninth is a very, very
good thing, with winning it on a base hit to boot. He’s here to stay, folks.

Credit Chicago Tribune

EDIT: Thanks to u/ChromiumSulfate for reminding me how days of the week work

Monday, August 7, 2017

"Yuck"- Dennis Eckersley describing rehab starts and the White Sox weekend series. Lopez on Friday most likely if you haven't heard. Besides Nick's first career homer and some solid at bats from Yoan, not much to say besides onwards with the tank.

Wednesday, August 2, 2017

Time for new memos in the home Comiskey clubhouse. 16x20, framed,
bold, multiple copies to each infielder…

Always yield to your outfielder

ALWAYS YIELD TO YOUR
OUTFIELDER

ALWAYS YIELD TO YOUR OUTFIELDER

The heart attack symptoms have worn off
since Monday, so it won’t be more than a couple days off for Yoan in a one step
on the shallow end ladder entrance to the big leagues. A play like that involving your top prospect
will make you question where the nearest defibrillator is, me watching Twitter
like a hawk after. The true outcome: rookie Moncada making a rookie mistake,
which Willy unfortunately took the brunt of.

It happens. It also shouldn’t
affect the timeline for our other prospects, whatever each one might be. Aren’t going to become major leaguers playing
in a bubble.

And we got a win out of it! I
personally don’t care if we lose out, but post-collision, that’s a win I wanted to see. I haven’t brought
up Davidson much here given his uncertainty in the 2020 plan- third baseman is
the most likely future external hire for Rick given Donaldson and Machado’s upcoming
free agency. Write Sox also has a great tweet comparing his stats to Josh
Fields of 2007, and it’s a near mirror image. 22 home runs is 22 home runs, well
worth a long tryout based on this year. Games like Sunday and Monday also make
you forget the strikeouts pretty fast. Put that win on Renteria’s resume- these
guys really don’t quit under him.

The next two games were rebuild as
scheduled. Opposing home runs, strikeouts,
men left on base (today’s leadoff triple not scoring especially brutal)- all a
day in the life at this point. Holland had the quasi-rebound start I was hoping
for: way too many strikeouts and men left on to help him out today. Tankers
gonna tank, and grab some bench ten times.

Biggest big picture news
(unfortunately because of Garcia’s injury) was Delmonico’s call up. Did well
for the first two games: clearly some jitters, especially yesterday, but some
very solid contact. Ozzie mentioned it in the postgame Monday: it’s good to
have prospects come up and struggle against good teams, and this part of
Toronto’s rotation followed by a four game set in Boston would be just that. Not expecting much over the Mendoza with this
upcoming small sample size, with Tuesday making me feel a little more
optimistic about something in the .260-.270 range. Short fences to right in Fenway
if he wants to get some power on that swing, provided Austin Jackson isn’t
roaming around center.